Dust-to-Digital was started in 1999 by Lance Ledbetter, a radio disc jockey at WRAS -- the student-run voice of Georgia State University. Having been recently introduced to vintage 78 rpm records by the reissue of the Anthology of American Folk Music in 1997, Ledbetter decided to set out on a search for rare gospel recordings.
Four and a half years later, Goodbye, Babylon was released. The 6CD box set was accompanied by a 200-page book and hand-packed with raw cotton in a wooden box. The response from music fans around the world was astounding, and it won a Grammy® award for Best CD Box Set in 2004. Since then, the label has consistently released high-quality, handsomely packaged, accolade-winning material.
Dust-to-Digital's mission is to produce high quality cultural artifacts, which combine rare, essential recordings with historic images and detailed texts describing the artists and their works.
"Gold-standard reissue label ... Although the folklorists lugging around tape recorders (and the performers carrying on ancient traditions) are worthy of much heralding, it's equally astounding how essential Lance Ledbetter's work at Dust-to-Digital has been to the preservation of traditional American folksong. It's easy to buy and appreciate these sets without realizing that the bulk of the material might have been lost -- or, at the very least, tethered to archives, readily accessible only to curious faculty, paper-writing students, and bespectacled researchers -- without Ledbetter's interference." -- Pitchfork

Double LP in gatefold sleeve with insert and download code. Expanded edition of the soundtrack to the celebrated 2014 documentary film Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll, originally released on CD by Dust-to-Digital in 2015. On April 17, 1975, Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge and Cambodian rock and roll was no more. Its star musicians were targeted and killed, record collections were destroyed, clubs were closed, and Western-style music-making, dancing, and clothes were outlawed. The deaths of approximately two million Cambodians and the horrors of the Killing Fields have been well documented; add to this John Pirozzi's fascinating tale of Cambodia's vibrant pop music scene, beginning in the 1950s and '60s and influenced by France's Johnny Hallyday and Britain's Cliff Richard and the Shadows. Cambodian culture has long been synonymous with a love for the arts. Don't Think I've Forgotten pays homage to the country's rock legends who paid for their creativity with their lives. Punctuating rare archival footage with telling interviews with the few surviving musicians, Don't Think I've Forgotten examines and unravels Cambodia's tragic past through the eyes, words, and songs of its popular music stars of the '50s, '60s, and '70s. Compiled by Pirozzi, the soundtrack album is very cinematic in nature -- the sequencing and remastered audio transport the listener through the rock and roll history of Cambodia in a way that parallels the film. It is both entertaining and essential to hear so many tracks that have never before been available outside of Cambodia. Performers include The Royal University of Fine Arts, Sinn Sisamouth, Chhoun Malay, Huoy Meas, Baksey Cham Krong, Ros Serey Sothea, Pen Ran, Sieng Vannthy, Va Sovy, Drakkar, Pou Vannary, Yol Aularong, and Cheam Chansovannary. Includes two tracks not included on the CD version ("Three Maidens" by Ros Serey Sothea and "Have You No Mercy" by Drakkar).

Dust-to-Digital's inaugural release, 2003's Goodbye, Babylon (DTD 001CD), included two recordings by a mysterious gospel musician from Texas named Washington Phillips, who died in 1954. After fielding inquiries about the hauntingly beautiful songs from listeners around the world, in 2013, Dust-to-Digital checked in with Michael Corcoran, the leading researcher on Phillips, to see if any new information had been uncovered. Indeed, Michael had some leads, but he would need a working budget to track them down. Three years later, in 2016, after combing through various archives and talking with the last surviving people from the Simsboro-area who remembered Phillips, the name of Phillips's homemade instrument (the Manzarene) has been revealed, in addition to the time, place, and manner of his death and many anecdotes about his life. Dust-to-Digital now share this story with Washington Phillips and His Manzarene Dreams, a 76-page hardcover book by Michael Corcoran accompanied by a CD of recordings made by Phillips between 1927 and 1929. To ensure a superior listening experience, the label tracked down the most pristine original copies of Phillips's 78-RPM records, created high-resolution transfers, and had the audio expertly remastered for the best-sounding Phillips reissue to date. Hear the sublime, hypnotic, ethereal music of Washington Phillips in clarity like never before. Washington Phillips and His Manzarene Dreams includes song lyrics, label reproductions, and photos, along with liner notes by Michael Corcoran.

"The mystery of Washington Phillips begins the first time you hear his sweetly-sung Christian blues, bathed in a celestial haze of notes from an instrument that sounds like a child's music box. His music is a simple prayer, with the blessing in the asking, the singing, the playing. But his ethereal sound is also highly developed to the point of being almost psychedelic. Where did this strange and moving music come from?" --Michael Corcoran

Repressed! Silkscreened cigar box with foil stamping details throughout, 120-page leatherette book, and four CDs containing 4 hours and 30 minutes of audio. Includes introduction by Lee Ranaldo, field notes by Paul Bowles, and annotations by Philip Schuyler. From July to December 1959, Paul Bowles crisscrossed Morocco making recordings of traditional music under the auspices of the Library of Congress. Although the trip occupied less than six months in a long and busy career, it was the culmination of Bowles's longstanding interest in North African music. The resulting collection remained a musical touchstone for the rest of his life and an important part of his mythology. Paul Bowles (1910-1999) was an American expatriate composer and author. He became associated with Tangier, Morocco, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his life. While living in Morocco, Bowles became a magnet for those envisioning the artist's life away from the mainstream. He was idolized by writers of the Beat Generation, many of whom (William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac) visited Bowles and his wife Jane in Tangier -- a city Burroughs would later reimagine as the "Interzone" in his 1959 novel Naked Lunch. Over four months in 1959, Bowles traveled an estimated 25,000 miles around Morocco, capturing vocal and instrumental (including dance) music of various tribes and other indigenous populations at 23 locations throughout the country. In 1972, the Library of Congress issued a double LP titled Music of Morocco, containing selections from the collection. This four-CD set contains the recordings included on that double LP in addition to a wealth of never-before-heard music from this rich collection. Includes performances by Maallem Ahmed, Rais Ahmed ben Bakrim, Moqaddem Mohammed ben Salem, Chikh Ayyad ou Haddou, Rais Mahamad ben Mohammed, Chikh Hamed bel Hadj Hamadi ben Allal, Maallem Ahmed Gacha, Chikha Fatoma bent Kaddour, Cheikha Haddouj bent Fatma Rohou, Mohammed bel HassanEl Ferqa dial Guedra (Bechara), Maalem Abdeslam Sarsi el Mahet, Sadiq ben Mohammed Laghzaoui MorsanEmbarek ben Mohammed, Maalem Mohammed Rhiata, Si Mohammed Bel Hassan Soudani, Maallem Taieb ben Mbarek, Hazan Isaac Ouanounou, members of the Hevrat Gezekel, Hazan Semtob Knafo, Amram Castiel, Hevrat David Hamelekh, Maalem el Hocein, Abdelkrim Rais, and members of the Family of the Chorfa of Ouezzane, as well as recordings of unknown performers.

Hardcover 84-page book with CD and streaming/download code. Born blind on June 15, 1880, in Floyd County, Virginia, Alfred Reed grew up on a West Virginia farm. In the 1920s, when radio became available in his area, Alfred listened to and enjoyed performances by several of the era's popular singers. Alfred would purchase songbooks and hymnbooks, and his wife Nettie would read the lyrics to him. Because the songs he learned from others did not always express aspects of what he was thinking, feeling, and experiencing, Alfred felt compelled to compose his own songs, and he was exceptionally talented in this endeavor -- a craftsman with many things to say. Relying upon his talent to generate money, he gave music lessons, performed at dances and various social and church gatherings, sold printed copies of his own lyrics, and, in 1927 and 1929, made the commercial recordings included on this set. Also includes performances by The West Virginia Night Owls, Orville Reed, and Alfred and Orville Reed. Compiled by Ted Olson, a scholar, poet, photographer, and musician based in east Tennessee. Olson has written or edited several books on Appalachian music, literature, and folklore, and he has curated book/album sets documenting such Appalachia-related music stories as the 1927-1928 Bristol Sessions, the 1928-1929 Johnson City Sessions, the 1929-1930 Knoxville Sessions, the Joseph Hall field recordings from the Great Smoky Mountains, and the early studio recordings of Tennessee Ernie Ford.

The third in composer and artist Brian Harnetty's series of recording projects stemming from the Berea College Appalachian Sound Archives, Rawhead & Bloodybones combines samples of music and folk tales with live instruments. The historic archival recordings of children recounting folk tales were made by Leonard Roberts in the 1940s and '50s. The combination of the children's youthful voices and the often gruesome stories they tell offers a striking and dramatic contrast. These recordings, along with other archival samples from Berea, are woven into a larger musical world, with additional instrumental parts added as a counterpoint to the stories. Working closely with archivists, historians, musicians, and the families of those sampled, Rawhead & Bloodybones respectfully re-contextualizes traditional music and folk tales into a unique, beautiful, playful, and haunting whole. Six-panel foldout case.

Legendary collector Joe Bussard is putting records out once again! After running the last 78-RPM label in the US (RIP Fonotone Records, 1956-1974), Bussard had relegated his efforts to promoting old-time music by making cassette tapes for people hungry to hear his rare treasures and producing his Country Classics radio show for stations in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. But in 2014, Bussard and his daughter Susannah Anderson had the idea to produce a compilation of Civil War tunes; they rang the office of Dust-to-Digital to gauge interest in distributing such a compilation. It was an easy decision for DTD. CD in digipak with 36-page booklet. Includes introductory essay by Kevin Fontenot and liner notes by Tony Russell. Includes tracks by Ernest Stoneman, Blue Ridge Mountain Singers, Grant Brothers & Their Music, Red Mountain Trio, Buell Kazee, G. B. Grayson - Henry Whitter, Ward & Winfield, Chubby Parker & His Littleold-Time Banjo, Da Costa Woltz's Southern Broadcasters, Capt. M. J. Bonner (The Texas Fiddler), Cherry Lane Express, Henry C. Gilliland and A. C. (Eck) Robertson, The Foreman Family, Asa Martin & James Roberts, McGee Brothers & Todd, and Fiddlin' John Carson & His Virginia Reelers.

LP version. Includes eight-page booklet and download code. Reed instruments are capable of some of the most impassioned music on the planet, due to the malleability of the reeds themselves -- historically made of plant tissue -- which vibrate when air hits them. The origin of most reed instruments is steeped in rural, pastoral culture. Many insistent, loud, often joyful reed instruments have always been played outdoors as traditional accompaniment for dancing and celebrations. This compelling album is the second volume in the Excavated Shellac release series, featuring rare, never-before-issued 78-RPM records from around the world centered on a unique theme. The previous volume (Excavated Shellac: Strings (DTD 044CD)) focused on stellar stringed-instrument performances. This release examines some of the most intense and hypnotic music set to disc during the early years of international recording, all featuring reed instruments.. All records have been carefully transferred and mastered. Featuring rare and historic photos, jaw-dropping graphics from the 78-RPM era, and extensive liner notes by compiler Jonathan Ward, founder and author of the acclaimed Excavated Shellac website. Includes tracks by I Tre Antonio della Basilicata (Italy), Sylvain Poujouly & Achille Marc (Auvergne, France), Karzana Oyun Havasi (Turkey), Tufanpur Orchestra (Iran), Ahn Ki-Ok and Kin Yin Kuan (North Korea), Guangdong Troupe with Da Kai men (China), T. Rajarathnam Pillai (India), Selim (Albania), Obdulia Alvarez, "La Busdonga" (Asturias, Spain), Jhande Nath (India), Hoseynkali was Roofakah (Kurdistan), Mohamed Efendi Baz (Upper Egypt), Ngoma Ya Kitokomire (Tanzania), Mqonga Sikanise (South Africa), Musicians of Radio Studio Skopje (Macedonia), uncredited musicians (Tajikistan), and Parush Parushev (Bulgaria).

Reed instruments are capable of some of the most impassioned music on the planet, due to the malleability of the reeds themselves -- historically made of plant tissue -- which vibrate when air hits them. The origin of most reed instruments is steeped in rural, pastoral culture. Many insistent, loud, often joyful reed instruments have always been played outdoors as traditional accompaniment for dancing and celebrations. This compelling album is the second volume in the Excavated Shellac release series, featuring rare, never-before-issued 78-RPM records from around the world centered on a unique theme. The previous volume (Excavated Shellac: Strings (DTD 044CD)) focused on stellar stringed-instrument performances. This release examines some of the most intense and hypnotic music set to disc during the early years of international recording, all featuring reed instruments. All previously unreleased on CD, with three bonus tracks not available on the LP version (PT 2006LP). All records have been carefully transferred and mastered. Digipak with 20-page booklet featuring rare and historic photos, jaw-dropping graphics from the 78-RPM era, and extensive liner notes by compiler Jonathan Ward, founder and author of the acclaimed Excavated Shellac website. Includes tracks by I Tre Antonio della Basilicata (Italy), Sylvain Poujouly & Achille Marc (Auvergne, France), Karzana Oyun Havasi (Turkey), Tufanpur Orchestra (Iran), Ahn Ki-Ok and Kin Yin Kuan (North Korea), Guangdong Troupe with Da Kai men (China), T. Rajarathnam Pillai (India), Selim (Albania), Obdulia Alvarez, "La Busdonga" (Asturias, Spain), Jhande Nath (India), Hoseynkali was Roofakah (Kurdistan), Mohamed Efendi Baz (Upper Egypt), Ngoma Ya Kitokomire (Tanzania), Mqonga Sikanise (South Africa), Musicians of Radio Studio Skopje (Macedonia), uncredited musicians (Tajikistan), and Parush Parushev (Bulgaria).

Ola Belle Reed and Southern Mountain Music on the Mason-Dixon Line is the first in-depth look at the life of Ola Belle Reed, a groundbreaking artist and one of the all-time greatest performers of authentic, old-time music. Born to a musical family in the mountains of Ashe County, North Carolina, in 1913, Reed became a prolific songwriter and performer, known for her unique style of banjo playing and singing. Reed inspired many musicians throughout her life, eventually becoming one of the leading lights of the folk music revival and winning the prestigious National Heritage Fellowship; in 2015, 13 years after her death in 2002, her influence continues to reverberate. In January of 1966, folklore graduate student Henry Glassie made the first professional solo recordings of Ola Belle Reed, travelling from Philadelphia to the town of Oxford, Pennsylvania to see Reed, Alex Campbell, and the New River Boys and Girls play their exciting brand of Southern mountain music live, on the air, in the back of the Campbell's Corner general store. Over the next two years, Glassie -- who went on to become one of the United States' most celebrated folkorists, a distinguished professor, and a world-renowned scholar -- recorded Reed's extensive repertoire, while also chronicling the remarkable story of the migration of communities from the Blue Ridge Mountains toward the Mason-Dixon Line before WWII. In 2009, Maryland state folklorist Clifford Murphy struck out to discover whether this rich musical tradition still existed in the small Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania towns where it once flourished. Murphy, amazed by what he encountered, began making audio recordings to document the descendants of Ola Belle Reed's musical legacy. This first-ever release of Reed's 1960s recordings, which were deposited in Indiana University Bloomington's Archives of Traditional Music, is counter-balanced by a disc of Murphy's recordings of Reed's descendants and those within her Appalachian community whom she inspired. This deluxe edition, presented as a 256-page hardcover book with two CDs of remastered recordings, highlights Reed's deep repertoire -- folk ballads, minstrel songs, country standards, and originals -- and traces the impact that her music made and is still making today. This project is a co-production between Dust-to-Digital, Maryland State Arts Council, and Indiana University. Includes performances by Ola Belle Reed, Dave Reed, Alex Campbell, Hugh Campbell, Zane Campbell, Burton DeBusk, the DeBusk-Weaver Family, Burl Kilby, T.J. Lundy, John Miller, Danny Paisley, and Ryan Paisley.

Folksongs of Another America is a compilation of field recordings made in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin between 1937 and 1946. Armed with bulky microphones, blank disks, spare needles, and cumbersome disc-cutting machines, several folklorists had the foresight to document and preserve a significant but overlooked part of the nation's musical heritage, made by immigrant, Native American, rural, and working-class performers. Almost all of these restored dance tunes, ballads, lyric songs, hymns, laments, versified taunts, political anthems, street cries, and recitations are issued here for the very first time. This five-CD set is filled with African-American, Austrian, Belgian, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French-Canadian, German, Ho-Chunk, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Irish, Italian, Luxembourger, Norwegian, Ojibwe, Oneida, Polish, Scots-Gaelic, Serbian, Swedish, Swiss, and Welsh performers, recorded by Sidney Robertson, Alan Lomax, and Helene Stratman-Thomas. The bonus DVD includes the documentary film The Most Fertile Source: Alan Lomax Goes North, with never-before-seen footage shot in Michigan in 1938. It combines digitally restored silent color film footage, related field recordings, voice-over readings from Lomax's correspondence and field notes, and onscreen text to create an audiovisual narrative featuring the performers and scenes that captivated Alan Lomax during his 1938 Upper Midwestern foray. The accompanying 456-page hardcover book includes extensive liner notes, lyric transcriptions, and translations by James P. Leary, co-founder of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This project is a co-production between Dust-to-Digital and the University of Wisconsin Press in collaboration with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the Association of Cultural Equity/Alan Lomax Archive.

Restocked. On April 17, 1975, Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge and Cambodian rock and roll was no more. Its star musicians were targeted and killed, record collections were destroyed, clubs were closed, and Western-style music-making, dancing, and clothes were outlawed. The deaths of approximately two million Cambodians and the horrors of the Killing Fields have been well-documented; add to this John Pirozzi's fascinating tale of Cambodia's vibrant pop music scene, beginning in the 1950s and '60s, influenced by France's Johnny Hallyday and Britain's Cliff Richard and the Shadows. The filmmaker has assembled rare archival footage, punctuating it with telling interviews with the few surviving musicians. Cambodian culture has long been synonymous with a love for the arts. Pirozzi's 2014 film Don't Think I've Forgotten pays homage to the country's rock legends who paid for their creativity with their lives. Through the eyes, words, and songs of its popular music stars of the '50s, '60s, and '70s, Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll examines and unravels Cambodia's recent tragic past. This soundtrack to Pirozzi's important film, compiled by the director, is very cinematic in nature. The sequencing and newly-remastered audio transport the listener through the rock and roll history of Cambodia in a similar fashion as Pirozzi's documentary film. It is both entertaining and essential to hear so many tracks that are available outside of Cambodia for the very first time. Includes tracks by The Royal University of Fine Arts, Sinn Sisamouth, Chhoun Malay, Huoy Meas, Baksey Cham Krong, Ros Serey Sothea, Pen Ran, Sieng Vannthy, Va Sovy, Drakkar, Pou Vannary, Yol Aularong, and Cheam Chansovannary.

In 1965 and 1966 Bruce Jackson visited Ramsey State Farm in Rosharon, Texas, where he recorded the remarkable epic songs of Johnnie B. Smith, a prisoner-composer doing a 45-year bid for the murder of his wife. Three of the recordings included on this two-disc set appeared on Ever Since I Have Been A Man Full Grown, an LP produced by John Fahey's Takoma Records in 1965. The other 15 -- traditional work songs and J.B.'s original pieces -- are issued for the first time. Folklorist Bruce Jackson was among the last to record work songs. He met Smith, prisoner #130196, during a 1964 visit to Ramsey State Farm. A native of Hearne, Texas, Smith was 46 years old and on his fourth prison term. In his younger days, Smith toted lead hoe in a flat-weeding gang and led the work songs. But he also sang other songs, different songs -- those he'd made up to occupy himself while chopping sugarcane or picking cotton. He referred to them as his "little ol' songs." The longest stretched to 33 verses, or more than 22 recorded minutes. Although Smith knew and sang a variety of melodies, to an assortment of work songs and sacred pieces, he employed only one tune for his compositions. What changed were the tempo and the ornamentation with which he individualized them. "The Major Special," "No More Good Time in the World for Me," "Ever Since I Been a Man Full Grown" -- each song Smith charged with its own emotional ambience, as a seasoned preacher intuits the particular colors and atmospheres that should imbue each portion of his service. Smith was paroled in 1967, a year after his final session with Jackson. That summer, Jackson arranged for him to sing at the Newport Folk Festival, at which he appeared on stage with Pete Seeger, and, in one of the only photos that survives of him, in the company of Robert Pete Williams and Muddy Waters. No More Good Time in the World for Me includes 18 remastered recordings, 15 of which are previously unreleased, and is presented in a digipak with a 36-page booklet containing liner notes by Nathan Salsburg (curator of the Alan Lomax Archive), full lyric transcriptions, and never-before-published photographs of J.B. Smith. Produced by Nathan Salsburg and Lance Ledbetter, founder of Dust-to-Digital.

"Collector and Americana yay-sayer Jim Linderman is an archivist of the obscure. His collections tell vast stories in sotto voce, allowing curios and objects shadowed by mainstream culture and ideology to converse and be heard. What we hear is an enormous American sub-culture speaking in forbidden, marginalized languages: stuff discovered boxed in the attic out of embarrassment or zealotry, smutty ash trays crowing next to religious pamphlets, each claiming a part of the complex, sometimes contradictory, always conflicted American imagination, a chaos of memories that will one day vanish. In The Birth of Rock and Roll, Linderman's arranged a storyboard of sorts that dramatizes the spirit, if not the chronology of rock and roll. Poetically, the photos evoke without naming, and have little to do with conventional iconography of the birth of rock and roll -- i.e., young white men in Memphis, poodle skirts, Alan Freed, Bill Haley's Brylcreem, etc. Instead they document, and celebrate, the pure but indefinable essence of rocking. Ordinary, nameless men, women, and children, some white, some black, are holding guitars and strumming while looking relaxed or frantic, but nearly always blissful. Some of the action takes place in rural fields, some in dance halls, some at civic events, some in living rooms and basements. Wherever there is an urge to make acoustic or electric music -- whether to help at a rent party, busk in front of a crowd, or testify in the name of Jesus -- there's an uncredited photographer there to snap an image" --Joe Bonomo. "I wanted them all to be anonymous, but several were identified, and the Carter Family was included because it is such a lovely snapshot [and it has never been published before now]. I like to think rock and roll emerged from a large collective of unknown folk 'down there' rather than from some stars 'up there'" --Jim Linderman. Includes an introduction by Jim Linderman and an interview with Jim Linderman by Joe Bonomo. Jim Linderman is a writer, art historian, collector, and publisher. He maintains a network of websites on art, photography, and culture. Joe Bonomo is an essayist and music writer. His books include Sweat: The Story of The Fleshtones, America's Garage Band; Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found; and Conversations With Greil Marcus. Book designer: Martin Venezky. 160 pages; 12 x 9.75 inches; 134 images reproduced in full color.

In the 1930s, the Massengill family of rural Arkansas built three portable photography studios on old truck frames, attached each to the back of any car that would run, and started a mobile photo booth business that would last for a decade. Without formal training or help, the Massengill family invented and improvised ways to mimic the popular photo booths they had seen in drug stores and brought their business to the dirt roads and open fields they knew well. Making Pictures: Three for a Dime, featuring Massengill family prints and photo albums collected by the artist Maxine Payne, illuminates a sliver of the Depression-era south previously unseen by the public. Unlike the hardscrabble lives and worn-down faces captured by Works Progress Administration photographers of the time, the Massengill photographs often show folks working to look their best. A man mugs in his Sunday suit and hat; a girl preens with lusty eyes; a boy clutches his prize rooster. Hand-painted backdrops, colorized prints, and even the occasional prop add a playful edge to these scenes. Among them, we also get a haunting glimpse or two of the difficult lives lived outside of these moments. Not unlike discovered troves of photographs by Vivian Maier or Mike Disfarmer, the Massengill photographs invite us to reconsider a time and place from a new perspective. Alongside the prints and albums, this volume includes introductions by Payne and curator Phillip March Jones, short remembrances from Lance and Evelyn Massengill, and a transcribed diary that recounts the difficulties and successes of the family business in short, powerful bursts. ("June 18, 1939 Mr Pennington drowned today. We went home about 4:00 o'clock and made cream at mama's.") Collected here in a handsome and ample design, Making Pictures: Three for a Dime is the definitive volume of the Massengill photographs. Hardcover book, 180 pages, 8.5" by 6.25", 271 images reproduced in full color.

In 1947, '48 and '59, renowned folklorist Alan Lomax went behind the barbed wire into the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck -- and, in 1959, a camera -- Lomax documented as best an outsider could the stark and savage conditions of the prison farm, where the black inmates labored "from can't to can't," chopping timber, clearing ground, and picking cotton for the state. They sang as they worked, keeping time with axes or hoes, adapting to their condition the slavery-time hollers that sustained their forbears and creating a new body of American song. Theirs was music, as Lomax wrote, that "testified to the love of truth and beauty which is a universal human trait."

"A few strands of wire were all that separated the prison from adjoining plantations. Only the sight of an occasional armed guard or a barred window in one of the frame dormitories made one realize that this was a prison. The land produced the same crop; there was the same work for blacks to do on both sides of the fence. And there was no Delta black who was not aware of how easy it was for him to find himself on the wrong side of those few strands of barbed wire ... These songs are a vivid reminder of a system of social control and forced labor that has endured in the South for centuries, and I do not believe that the pattern of Southern life can be fundamentally reshaped until what lies behind these roaring, ironic choruses is understood." --Alan Lomax, 1958

"Black prisoners in all the Southern agricultural prisons in the years of these recordings participated in two distinct musical traditions: free world (the blues, hollers, spirituals and other songs they sang outside and, when the situation permitted, sang inside as well) and the work-songs, which were specific to the prison situation, and the recordings in this album represent that complete range of material, which is one of the reasons this set is so important: it doesn't just show this or that tradition within Parchman, but the range of musical traditions performed by black prisoners. I know of no other album that does that." --Bruce Jackson, 2013

124-page hardcover book with 2 CDs. 6.25 inches x 9.5 inches (landscape). Includes slipcase and foil stamping. 44 audio recordings, 12 previously-unreleased, all newly remastered; 77 photographs, many published here for the first time; Essays by Alan Lomax, Anna Lomax Wood, and Bruce Jackson. Produced by Lance Ledbetter, founder of Dust-to-Digital, and Nathan Salsburg, curator of the Alan Lomax Archive.

What happens when a 78 collector marries a collector of antique photographs? Lead Kindly Light: recordings of rural Southern music: old time, string band music from Appalachia, extremely rare country blues and African American gospel singing from 1924-1939. A portrait of the rural American South between the dawn of the twentieth century and World War II, Lead Kindly Light brings together two CDs of traditional music from early phonograph records and a fine hardcover book of never-before-published vernacular photography. North Carolina collectors Peter Honig and Sarah Bryan have spent years combing backroads, from deep in the Appalachian mountains to the cotton and tobacco lowlands, in search of the evocative music and images of the pre-War South. The music of Lead Kindly Light presents outstanding lesser-known recordings by early stars of recorded country music, as well as rarely- and never-reissued treasures by obscure country, blues, and gospel artists. The photographs, mainly images of the rural and small-town South, are richly textured depictions of family life, work, and fun, and the often accidental beauty of the vernacular snapshot. 159 photographs from the collection of Sarah Bryan reproduced in full color. 46 audio recordings from the 78 RPM record collection of Peter Honig. 176-page hardcover book with 2 CDs. 8.5 inches x 6.5 inches. Debossed and tip-on cover.

For the traveling recording men of the late 1920s, Arkansas offered enticing pickings. The region was thronged with vigorous, idiosyncratic string bands. This album carries the listener from the hillbilly music craze of the '20s to the song-based country music of the late '30s. Scarcely more than a decade, but a period, in music as in all American life, of galvanic change. This CD serves as the soundtrack album to the newly-released photograph book, Making Pictures: Three for a Dime by Maxine Payne. All of the photos in this package are from the same cache of photographs taken by the Massengil family in their mobile photo-booth trailer throughout rural Arkansas in the 1930s-1940s.

"It is indeed gratifying to know our program has made so many minds and hearts drift back to the earlier days when all was well, when the 'hoss hair pullers' of old were in due form and all parties concerned were in a receptive mood for tipping of the fantastic toe... My aggregation from this district claim that their music and songs are not suggestive of anything except good and wholesome exercise ... So everybody come to the Arkansas Ozarks, where you can eat the best fruit in the world; where home-cured meat is found in the smokehouse and corn and hay in the barn; where you can juice your own cow, feed your own chickens, fish in the wonderful White River, meet these men of the Missouri Pacific and natives, and you will then say, 'Yes, indeed, you have the most wonderful country in the world.'" --Henry Harlin Smith, March 1926 on Hot Springs radio station KTHS

Includes a CD digipak with a 32-page booklet with liner notes by country music scholar Tony Russell. Newly remastered 24-bit audio transfers from the Music Memory archive. Features original 78 RPM recordings made between 1928-1937.

The Sandman's Garden examines the life and art of Lonnie Holley, a self-taught African-American artist and musician who was based in Birmingham, Alabama at the time this film was originally released (2005). The documentary follows Holley as he builds a sculptural environment out of discarded materials and found objects in the Birmingham Museum of Art's sculpture garden. His art is by turns profound, playful, and deeply moving. As the garden grows piece by piece, Holley is revealed as a man who has overcome a tortured past. Growing up poor and black in the 20th century American South, Holley worked to overcome prejudice and deprivation by using art to explore his life and ideas. The camera captures the artist's process and reflections as he gathers materials, creates pieces, plays music, interacts with others, and relives the joys and sorrows that forged his unique and genuine artwork. NTSC format, region free. Stereo sound, 64 minutes, Aspect ratio: 16:9.

Keeping a Record of It is the follow-up to Lonnie Holley's debut album Just Before Music (DTD 026CD). Guest performers include Cole Alexander from the Black Lips, Bradford Cox from Deerhunter, and visual artist Lillian Blades. Gatefold sleeve. "Lonnie Holley sings with an intense, emotional voice and unleashes lyrics without consistent meter or rhyme over gossamer keyboard lines that hang in the ether. His music is a blues nebula, splotched with riffy word jazz that shares in some rappers' collagist aesthetics as well as the runaway passion of a gospel preacher enlivened by the Spirit." --Aquarium Drunkard

Just Before Music is the debut album by Lonnie Holley. Available on vinyl for the first time, the double LP includes four songs Holley recorded live at WFMU on March 21, 2013. "Last year, at 62, after decades of singing while he worked, Holley released his jarring debut album, Just Before Music, a marriage of improvised keys and the rambling, hollow bellow of his voice, as well as the first original recording put out by the archival label Dust-to-Digital. This year, he'll tour, and he recently performed in a Whitney Museum group show, 'Blues for Smoke.'" --The Fader. Comes in a gatefold jacket with insert.

Keeping a Record of It is the follow-up to Lonnie Holley's debut album, Just Before Music (DTD 026CD). It features recordings made in 2006, 2010, and 2011. Guest performers include Cole Alexander from the Black Lips, Bradford Cox from Deerhunter, and visual artist Lillian Blades.

Longing for the Past: The 78 RPM Era in Southeast Asia is the first survey of the 78 RPM record era in Southeast Asia. It is a kaleidoscopic collection featuring four CDs with 90 tracks of music spanning six decades (1905-1966), accompanied by a 272-page book with essays and annotations by leading ethnomusicologists that is richly illustrated with more than 250 vintage photographs, record labels, and sleeves. David Murray is the curator of Haji Maji (www.HajiMaji.com), a blog dedicated to the exploration of 78 RPM Asian music. He previously produced two LPs for Dust-to-Digital: Luk Thung: Classic & Obscure 78s from the Thai Countryside (DTD 029CD) and Kassidat: Raw 45s from Morocco (DTD 032CD/PT 2004LP). Longing for the Past: The 78 RPM Era in Southeast Asia continues the mission of Dust-to-Digital to explore the early days of recorded sound from around the world. Much like Opika Pende: Africa at 78 RPM (DTD 022CD) broke new ground in research while reissuing dozens of tracks for the very first time, Longing for the Past examines an era of music from a geographical region that has remained hidden until now.

Fourteen outstanding funky performances of Thai country groove music from the 1950s and early 1960s. All previously un-reissued, carefully transferred and mastered from the original 78rpm records and presented with detailed full-color liner notes. Luk Thung is the down home, funky "country music" of Thailand that blossomed as rural Thais migrated to Bangkok for work in the 1950s and 1960s. Luk Thung evolved out of a complex stew of traditional folk styles and international influences. Wild accordions and Latin horn sections mingle with Thai hand drums and finger cymbals, while exquisite vocalists swagger and sing stories about life's struggles. Compiled by David Murray, with notes by Peter Doolan.

Qat, Coffee & Qambus: Raw 45s from Yemen is a compilation of rare, Yemeni vinyl singles, showcasing the little-documented, evolving local music styles in the 1960s and 1970s. Vintage oud and vocal music inspired by the qat-chewing, coffee-sipping, qambus-playing culture of Yemen. Although part of the classical Arabic musical tradition, the music of Yemen takes its rhythmic lead as much from the East African coast (a mere 20 miles across the Red Sea) as the surrounding Arab Peninsula. Little has been written about the music and culture of one of the world's oldest civilizations, and each 45rpm disc gives a small glimpse of the poetic tradition, the unique local oud styles as well as an insight into people's day to day lives, or the highs and lows of human relationships. Overall, the compilation gives a flavor of the sights and sounds of Yemen, with detailed notes that tell the story of the hunt for music that has mostly lain forgotten in the antique markets of the capital, until now.